dear reader

on the magic of reading

Jan 07, 2025

My reading habits have gotten me into trouble a time or two. In sixth grade once we had finished a test we were allowed to turn it in and read for the rest of the period. This meant that I ‘finished’ my tests in record time so I could get back to my book1 and wouldn’t you know that my grades suffered causing my teacher to revoke this privilege for everyone as a result. Sorry fellow students.2

Now I read whenever I damn well please3 which means I read 131 books in 20244. I’m still irritated that it wasn’t 132 but that was because I spent the last week of the year with a 640 page book that I finally decided to abandon 338 pages in. It had good blurbs5 and an intriguing premise with some lovely writing but I just never cared. I didn’t care about the setting, the voice, the action or the characters. And when I realized that opening this book had became a chore that I felt forced to accomplish, I finally asked myself ‘could I close this book now (at page 338) without a care for what happens next?’ The answer was yes. So I did.6 I was crabby that I’d given it prime holiday reading time and wouldn’t be able to mark it ‘read’ even after over 300 pages, but I’m glad I didn’t succumb to the sunk cost fallacy and sour even more time with a story that wasn’t working for me. I really don’t want to force myself to read or pretend to enjoy a book just because other people did. I asked questions and spent a few beats trying to understand why it didn’t work for me7 and then returned it to the library to perhaps find a better matched reader.

I’m proud of this one year old newsletter which has given me the motivation and space to be a more intentional, active reader. Because they may appear on a future shelf, I started to take notes, ask questions, copy quotes and write critiques as I read most of these 2024 books which meant that they stuck with me more than previous year’s reads. For better or worse. I’m quite a moody reader and I read with an editor’s eye8 which can result in some pretty scathing comments in my notes app but I found this to be a rewarding, amusing and delightful exercise. The act of reading is uniquely special and magical so I want, not be more efficient or accomplished, but to continue to be more intentional and attentive. I want to notice, name or work through what draws me into a story or what takes me out or what its telling me. To spend time and attention on a book, to interact with it out of respect for the author, the art and myself.

So, as we begin a new year of reading here are some writer’s thoughts about the magic of reading that I want to try to incorporate myself. Perhaps you do too?

the 3rd annual alix e. harrow gift guide by alix e harrow9

(bolding emphasis mine)

i was talking to a writing friend a couple of weeks ago, and he thanked me very sincerely for being--or making myself--"something like the ideal reader for pretty much anything you read." and--well. i like that.
i like the way it frames reading as skilled labor rather than pure leisure. i like the implication that you, the Ideal Reader, are not a sleek ambush predator who waits for the Ideal Book to stroll into your mouth--but one of those sweaty, ignominious endurance hunters, who has to chase it down. that reading well is an exercise in sustained curiosity, and curiosity is work.
it's work to approach a book as a collusion of intentional aesthetic decisions, rather than a consumable product engineered solely to please you; to ask why, from what angle, to what end, for who, against what; to keep your disbelief generously suspended and your arms uncrossed; to indulge--knowingly, but not condescendingly--in the conceits of the genre; to resist the paranoid, destructive reading that reduces every work to a moral positive or negative; to let yourself be surprised by the twist; to worry less about what your reactions to a book say about you and more about what the book is saying to you; to listen, to feel, to think, to empathize, to find your way in--idk. it's work, to fall in love.

I’m struck by her challenge to care less about being perceived as a ‘reader’ and simply focus on the experience of reading. A good reminder in the time of BookTok and Bookstagram10. I find myself in this trap when I look at my library pile and begin to treat it as homework—books to finish just to have read, to be the kind of person who reads xyz, to finish 10 a month to retain my ‘speed reader’ reputation blah blah blah. I use Harrow’s challenge to catch myself when the activity of reading mutates into something altogether different. Something I don’t actually want. So, to myself and to you: please read whatever you actually want11 but read intentionally, with curiosity and attention12. After all, maybe love and attention are the same thing?

Of course not every book is worth our love/attention but I want to question why. Why didn’t this land? Why am I so bored? Why don’t I care? or Why am I so invested? Why is this so striking/powerful/interesting/addictive/emotional/etc? This questioning and examining makes me a more active reader, a participant in the alchemical magic of story whether I hated the book, loved it or felt meh13 about it. I want to exercise this attention muscle even more this year14 which may lead me to quit a book more often than I already do. But that is fine, after all I’ve got quite a few waiting for me.

Good Readers and Good Writers by Vladimir Nabokov

(bolding emphasis mine)

We all have different temperaments, and I can tell you right now that the best temperament for a reader to have, or to develop, is a combination of the artistic and the scientific one. The enthusiastic artist alone is apt to be too subjective in his attitude towards a book, and so a scientific coolness of judgment will temper the intuitive heat. If, however, a would-be reader is utterly devoid of passion and patience—of an artist’s passion and a scientist’s patience—he will hardly enjoy great literature.

There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three—storyteller, teacher, enchanter—but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.

The three facets of the great writer—magic, story, lesson—are prone to blend in one impression of unified and unique radiance, since the magic of art may be present in the very bones of the story, in the very marrow of thought. It seems to me that a good formula to test the quality of a novel is, in the long run, a merging of the precision of poetry and the intuition of science. In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass.

I’m all about the combinations here, that we use a blend of artistic and scientific understanding, a right brain and left brain approach, both body and mind when interacting with a text. This can make verbalizing reactions to a book messy and complicated as our interpretation comes from that spinal sense which may not always adhere to the laws and limits of language. I resonate with the idea that how we experience a book is magical and mystical; not completely namable, tangible, tame or consistent. This rings especially true when I think about when or where or why I read a particular book and if nostalgia, mood or environment has played a factor in the experience.15 Do you concur?

I also love the idea of a writer as enchanter or magician as they stir eye of newt and toe of frog, I mean magic + story + lesson into something unique to themselves and to each reader. Everyone’s emulsification is unique which is so thrilling as it fosters conversation16 and further inquiry, interaction and attention. The best books make me feel and think long after the last page. I’m unsatisfied if my mind is engaged but I feel nothing or if I feel emotional but my brain is under stimulated. I want to read more holistically, to read with my spine and pay attention to its reactions.

How Should One Read a Book? by Virginia Woolf

(bolding emphasis mine)

But you will notice the note of interrogation at the end of my title. One may think about reading as much as one chooses, but no one is going to lay down laws about it. Here in this room, if nowhere else, we breathe the air of freedom. Here simple and learned, man and woman are alike. For though reading seems so simple—a mere matter of knowing the alphabet—it is indeed so difficult that it is doubtful whether anybody knows anything about it.

To read a book well, one should read it as if one were writing it. Begin not by sitting on the bench among the judges but by standing in the dock with the criminal.

Reading is not merely sympathizing and understanding; it is also criticizing and judging. Hitherto our endeavor has been to read books as a writer writes them. We have been trying to understand, to appreciate, to interpret, to sympathize. But now, when the book is finished, the reader must leave the dock and mount the bench. He must cease to be the friend; he must become the judge. And this is no mere figure of speech. The mind seems (“seems,” for all is obscure that takes place in the mind) to go through two processes in reading. One might be called the actual reading; the other the after reading. During the actual reading, when we hold the book in our hands, there are incessant distractions and interruptions. New impressions are always completing or cancelling the old. One’s judgment is suspended, for one does not know what is coming next. Surprise, admiration, boredom, interest, succeed each other in such quick succession that when, at last, the end is reached, one is for the most part in a state of complete bewilderment. Is it good? or bad? What kind of book is it? How good a book is it? The friction of reading and the emotion of reading beat up too much dust to let us find clear answers to these questions. If we are asked our opinion, we cannot give it. Parts of the book seem to have sunk away, others to be starting out in undue prominence.
Then perhaps it is better to take up some different pursuit—to walk, to talk, to dig, to listen to music. The book upon which we have spent so much time and thought fades entirely out of sight. But suddenly, as one is picking a snail from a rose, tying a shoe, perhaps, doing something distant and different, the whole book floats to the top of the mind complete. Some process seems to have been finished without one’s being aware of it. The different details which have accumulated in reading assemble themselves in their proper places. The book takes on a definite shape; it becomes a castle, a cowshed, a gothic ruin, as the case may be. Now one can think of the book as a whole, and the book as a whole is different, and gives one a different emotion, from the book received currently in several different parts. Its symmetry and proportion, its confusion and distortion can cause great delight or great disgust apart from the pleasure given by each detail as it is separately realized. Holding this complete shape in mind it now becomes necessary to arrive at some opinion of the book’s merits, for though it is possible to receive the greatest pleasure and excitement from the first process, the actual reading, though this is of the utmost importance, it is not so profound or so lasting as the pleasure we get when the second process—the after reading—is finished, and we hold the book clear, secure, and (to the best of our powers) complete in our minds.

But the questions which suggest themselves are innumerable. They ramify infinitely, and many of them are apparently irrelevant. Yet it is by asking them and pursuing the answers as far as we can go that we arrive at our standard of values, and decide in the end that the book we have just read is of this kind or of that, has merit in that degree or in this. And it is now, when we have kept closely to our own impression, formulated independently our own judgment, that we can most profitably help ourselves to the judgments of the great critics—Dryden, Johnson, and the rest. It is when we can best defend our own opinions that we get most from theirs.

Preach Virginia! I’m all in on her directive to think and trust in our own experience, perception and opinion instead of relying on the ‘great critics’ to inform us of it. My own upbringing had a lot of ‘lean not on your own understanding’ vibes which really translated to ‘lean on this white male pastor’s understanding’ and I’m on a path of rejecting all of that. It comes at much too high a cost. It is probably inevitable that buzz or bias about some books will seep into my consciousness in this day and age, but I want to remember to ask my questions, pursue my answers and hold my judgement in high esteem and then, if I want, check out what others are saying to take or leave.

I would like to say that I approach each new book ‘from the bench’, open and on the side of the author because each book could be my next favorite. But I’m also quite cynical and suspicious and I do see my attention17 as a privilege that must be earned by the work. As Woolf states, there are no laws to reading, so I’m free to come up with my own cocktail of an approach.

I also want to keep in mind Woolf’s idea of ‘after reading’, engaging with the book as a whole after you’ve experienced its parts. A good reminder to let a story rest and resolve, sit and settle after reading the last page. If given the time and space,18 will the book require more of my attention or will it flee under the threat of interrogation?

In the first place, a good reader will give the writer the benefit of every doubt; the help of all his imagination; will follow as closely, interpret as intelligently as he can. In the next place, he will judge with the utmost severity. Every book, he will remember, has the right to be judged by the best of its kind. He will be adventurous, broad in his choice, true to his own instincts, yet ready to consider those of other people. This is an outline which can be filled, in at taste and at leisure, but to read something after this fashion is to be a reader whom writers respect. It is by the means of such readers that masterpieces are helped into the world.

Absolutely yes. And finally, this

It is true that we get nothing whatsoever except pleasure from reading; it is true that the wisest of us is unable to say what that pleasure may be. But that pleasure—mysterious, unknown, useless as it is—is enough. That pleasure is so curious, so complex, so immensely fertilizing to the mind of anyone who enjoys it, and so wide in its effects, that it would not be in the least surprising to discover, on the day of judgment when secrets are revealed and the obscure is made plain, that the reason why we have grown from pigs to men and women, and come out from our caves, and dropped our bows and arrows, and sat round the fire and talked and drunk and made merry and given to the poor and helped the sick and made pavements and houses and erected some sort of shelter and society on the waste of the world, is nothing but this: we have loved reading.

AMEN.

Thank you for being readers of books and of this newsletter. I hope that in 2024 the rolling ladder has provided you with a book or two for your tbr pile or a new curiosity thread to follow or, at the very least, added a chuckle, lip quirk or eye roll to your Tuesdays. Back to regular shelving next week!